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Gap Inc. Furloughs Bricks-and-Mortar Employees

Gap Inc. is the latest large specialty retailer to announce that it would furlough its employees.

On May 30, the San Francisco–headquartered specialty retailer announced that it would furlough the majority of store employees for its bricks-and-mortar stores in America and Canada. It runs more than 2,780 stores under the nameplates of Gap, Banana Republic, Old Navy, Athleta and Intermix.

Sonia Syngal, Gap Inc.’s chief executive officer, said that the entire Gap leadership team would take a temporary pay cut. However, the sum of the pay cut was not disclosed.

“After taking the extraordinary measures of temporarily closing all of our company-owned stores in North America and Europe two weeks ago, we are now in a position where we must take deeper actions,” she said. “Each decision, however difficult, has been made to ensure that we build toward a future where Gap Inc. can come out of this stronger, for our customers, our shareholders and, most importantly, our teams.”

Gap Inc. set up an employee resource center where furloughed company workers could get leads on temporary retail jobs.

The temporary closures come at a tough time for Gap Inc.’s bricks-and-mortar stores. It was already scheduled to wrap up the closure of 230 Gap-brand stores in 2020.